Samantha at the World's Fair eBook

“No; We can’t afford to,” sez he,
“and keep Our present popularity. Now,
there’s every chance, so fur as I can see, for
me to be elected Path-Master, and the high position
of Salesman of the Jonesville Cheese Factory has been
as good as offered to me agin this year. It is
because We are popular,” sez he, “that
I have these positions of trust and honor held out
to me. We have wrote books that have took,
Samantha. Now, what would be the result if We
should slight Columbus and turn Our backs onto America
in this crisis of her history? It would be simply
ruinous to Our reputation and my official aspirations.
Everybody would be mad, and kick, from the President
down. More’n as likely as not I should
never hold another office in Jonesville. Cheese
would be sold right over my head by I know not who.
I should be ordered out to work on the road like a
dog by Ury jest as like as not. I’ve been
a-settin’ here and turnin’ it over in
my mind; and though, as you say, I hain’t always
favored the idee of writin’, still at the present
time I believe We’d better write the book.
There’s ink in the house, hain’t there?”
sez he anxiously.

“Our!” “We!” Agin them words
entered my soul like lead arrows and gaulded me, but
agin I looked up, and the clear light of affection
that shone from my pardner’s eyes melted them
arrows, and I suffered and wuz calm. But anon
I sez—­

“Don’t great emotions rise up in your
soul, Josiah Allen, when you think of Columbus and
the World’s work? Don’t the mighty
waves of the past and the future dash up aginst your
heart when you think of Christopher, and what he found,
and what is behind this nation, and what is in front
of it, a-bagonin’ it onwards?”

“No,” sez he calmly; “I look at
it with the eye of a business man, and with that eye,”
sez he, “I say less write the book.”

He ceased his remarks, and agin silence rained in
the room.

But to me the silence wuz filled with voices that
he couldn’t hear—­deep, prophetic
voices that shook my soul. Eyes whose light the
dust fell on four hundred years ago shone agin on me
in that quiet room in Jonesville, and hanted me.
Heroic hands that wuz clay centuries ago bagoned to
me to foller ’em where they led me. And
so on down through the centuries the viewless hosts
passed before me and gin me the silent countersign
to let me pass into their ranks and jine the army.
And then, away out into the future, the Shadow Host
defiled—­fur off, fur off—­into
the age of Freedom, and Justice, and Perfect rights
for man and woman, Love, Joy, Peace.

Josiah didn’t see none of these performances.

No; two pardners may set side by side, and yet worlds
lay between ’em.
He wuz agin immersed in his ambitious reveries.